We had a great conversation with Randall this past week and can’t wait to share this episode with you! We discussed everything about the war in Israel with Hamas, worship styles/practices in Israel, and much more.
You can read the full conversation below.
Welcome back to the Riverside Church podcast. We’ve taken a long break for the summer as we’ve kinda reset and rethought what all we’re gonna do going forward. But here at Riverside, in this podcast, our mission is to equip you to live out the gospel in daily life. I’m here today with Randall Ford, who is a pastor in Israel, and we’re just gonna be talking about, really, I’ve kind of put it in 3 categories. We’re gonna talk about the practical, what’s it like to live daily in Israel, especially right now with all the different things that are going on there.
We’re gonna talk a little bit about the personal, as a pastor, and, we’ll talk a little bit about that, what worship looks like there, where they are, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about the political, the Israel Hamas war that’s going on right now in Gaza. There’s a lot of information and disinformation in the news, and so we’re gonna go to the source and kinda talk about what’s going on there. And so hold on for the ride for us today. I think it’s gonna be a good time together and excited about our conversation. So let’s just start out just a little bit, Randall.
Tell us, you know, little bit about yourself. You live in Israel currently. Right. But your family lives here in Roanoke. Yeah.
So the Roanoke connection is at about 30 years ago when I was in college. My dad moved up to work for the railroad, and he was actually the medical director of the railroad. And then they, they retired here, and they love the Roanoke Valley area. And we all loved it whenever whenever we were here. My brother lives here locally, and, my sister lives nearby in North Carolina in Winston Salem.
So we feel kinda like local people. And one interesting thing that happens here is after I speak in a church, folks will come up, because I’ll come back. I’ve been back more frequently lately because dad hasn’t been feeling well, unfortunately, and we’ve had several helpful discussions about that, Brian. Thank you. So I’ll come back and I’ll share something about Israel and what’s going on, then people will say, so, are you living in Israel or are you, you know, so I guess they expected something else or an accent or I’m not sure, Brian, but we’re kind of in 2 worlds that way.
Sure. Now you speak English and Hebrew fluently. Right? Yes. Yes.
And, when I was growing up, I learned a bunch of German too and then took it in college. So languages are are one of my things, but the the 2 I speak really well are Hebrew and English. My wife’s a lot better. She’s got Russian in there too. Cool.
Uh-huh. So one of the things, you know, we hear when we read the news here in the US and Israel’s involved, it’s almost always when something big happens. Mhmm. And usually it’s negative, you know, some an area was bombed or you hear a lot about rockets going into Israel, but we don’t see a whole lot about what it’s like to live in the day to day. So can you describe kinda what daily life is like for you in Israel?
Sure, sure. Well, one thing to remember, I grew up in a Christian family, so I grew up with the pictures from the old Bibles of camels and dry deserts and what people think of as the Middle East. And that’s a picture you have to kind of, you know, let it be shaken from your mind a little bit because Israel is a highly developed country, one of the most, prosperous in the world, a great economy. I think we’re listed as an emerging economy like Brazil and Singapore. So it’s a very advanced place to live, but as someone once put it, if you scratch under the surface and get into people’s hearts and the way they think, it’s the Middle East.
Mhmm. We kind of have this, dichotomy. And then that that’s also strengthened by the fact that there are different kinds of Jews or different areas the Jews came from. And Jews from the Middle East called Sephardic Jews, so their grandparents or their parents were born in Iraq or Syria or Morocco or something like that, they’re gonna have a different way that they grew up and that they think than, than what many of us think of in North America as Jewish, kind of, a Western Jewish, what we call Ashkenazi. And that means a Jew that originate originally originally originally from Germany, so Northern Europe.
So you have that kind of dichotomy in the way people think and act, and we’re about half and half. So that’s a that helps to explain this kind of under the surface thinking. Yeah. So you don’t have to get on your camel or horse to ride to the grocery store. No.
No, we’ve got a car, we don’t have 2 cars, so we don’t have 1 per person like you might have here, but it shows a much smaller country. And that’s, that’s that’s like almost every country in the world when you don’t live in the States. You can’t picture something being close because it’s only 3 hours drive away. Mhmm. That’s a very American thing.
So we, we do have that where you drive an hour to Tel Aviv and you’re just tired and you don’t know if you can do it. It’s late at night. You know, you’ve got windy roads. Can you do it? So that’s that’s something we experience there that I wouldn’t experience here.
Mhmm. Now with all of the, you know, in the midst of the Israel Hamas war with Hamas launching rockets into Israel, which honestly, that’s not new. That’s been happening for Sure. For decades really. Right.
Is there a a sense in which many Israelis live under that constant threat, or is it just become a part of the day to day and they have a sense of security and Well, I think, one of the things that’s happening spiritually is that God’s moving in, the Jewish people. I believe when I look at Scripture, there are many, many promises that God is involved with the nation of Israel. As a Christian, I see God’s love for me portrayed in His love for the Jewish people, that here’s this, certain nation that has not always followed God. But, God loves them and protects them. And so it’s kind of like a faith thing for us to be encouraged as Christians to see His faithfulness to Jewish people.
Now, how does that translate day to day? Well, I think God is working for Jewish people. I believe in in Jesus. I am a follower of the Messiah of Israel. And so I believe that that is the direction that God is leading Jewish people is to believe in their Messiah and to understand, that.
So part of that, in my thinking, is Israel is always under pressure. God is always kind of you know, I think He is wanting us and also we may experience this as Americans. You know, it’s been easy to be kind of very passive in the way that we are politically or, the way that we live as Christians? What does it mean to a person to be, you know so I think the same kind of challenges we’re facing much more here in the United States. So how does it look day to day?
Well, Israelis are under pressure, but it’s not a pressure like we had one siren since the war started almost a year ago. And depending on when you you post this, it’ll be a year, October 7th, that this is Israel’s longest war in the modern state’s history since 1948. So Israelis feel that pressure, but the ones who are who suffer it all the time are people whose, kids are are serving, which is 100 of 1000 of parents. And, 2, you know, 200,000 or so regular armies, so that’s young people, many of them, or their husbands are gone because they’re in a crucial unit and they’re doing their reserve duty. And also, we still have around 80,000 displaced people.
So these are people that can’t return to their homes and their farms along the northern border with Lebanon and tens of thousands that are still evacuated from the destroyed border communities next to Gaza. It’s a strip about 25 miles north to south right on the Mediterranean Sea. If you look on a map, I guess you’re coming from this direction. Down here is Egypt and the other three sides, one is the ocean, and then two more are Israel. So it’s, it’s an area where everyone that was living along there has has been their lives have been overturned pretty much.
So those people are affected. And when you say 80,000 people in Israel, that’s a lot of people. Yeah. You know, it’s like 1% of the whole population of Israel. Wow.
You’re talking about God’s hand of protection on Israel, you see that. Maybe talk about this a little bit later, but you can see that from the very beginning, from the establishment of Israel in 1948 when they were immediately attacked by almost every surrounding Yeah. Islamic country and victoriously, won that battle. All odds. Right?
And, so anyway, it’s it’s interesting to see that. So something you said a minute ago, I wanna talk about a little bit, and you talked about Israel being God’s chosen people. Mhmm. And I think that’s important to talk about because I think as Christians, sometimes we don’t understand that because, you know, we talk about the promises of God through Jesus for a believer. And I know believers ask me all the time, why would the Jewish nation still be God’s chosen people nationally if largely they reject Messiah as savior?
Mhmm. And so can you talk about that a little bit, why? Sure, absolutely. There are different views theologically, and each has its argument. Personally, I believe that when you read the New Testament and it talks about Israel, it’s not talking about the church.
There are 1 or 2 passages that you can say, okay, this one, this one maybe, and I believe that the overall message is so clear that you just, you know, look at those and say, well, no, this is not one that I can hang my hat on and say the church has become Israel. What Paul talks about in Romans, in fact, the heart of Romans, so Romans is like where we go to you know, I’m a theologian and I have a PhD in biblical it’s kind of Jewish biblical interpretation, so that I could talk intelligently about this kind of thing with our Jewish friends as well. When you come to those theological points, you see that God has the minimum is to say God has a future for Israel. So even those who are more like, Well, I see so much about the Church in Israel, so I think, you know, we’ve kind of just blended into that, it’s called covenant theology, we’ve got kind of, you know, this long history of the covenant and now it’s the new covenant, and so kind of the Church is more like Israel or inherited Israel. So the minimum for that view is that God has a future for the Jewish people.
I take a much more maximalist view, which is that God has 2 peoples that are chosen. He has the Church, which is true believers in Messiah, and He also has Israel that He has never let go and never given up on. So back to Romans, Paul writes about I mean, if we think about the gospel and, you know, what is salvation, we get so much from Romans, right? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, these kinds of Scriptures. Well, the heart of Romans is Romans 9, 1011.
And Paul is just so clear there. He says, well, I mean, the most dramatic statement of all this, he says, I wish I could go to hell for my people. Mhmm. And you can’t come in there and argue and say, well, he’s talking about the church and Israel. It’s so clear in those passages that it’s physical Israel.
One question that comes up about that is what is a Jew? And don’t be confused because Jews talk about this too. Who’s a Jew? So the the Orthodox would have a view that it’s a person that’s born to a Jewish mom, and which is interesting. It’s kind of developed over millennia because a biblical view was a Jewish father or really a Jewish parent made a person Jewish and and being attached to the nation of Israel.
The feasts and circumcision was was often a way that a person would, would convert to Judaism. Jew Jewish kind of markers were keeping a kosher diet, circumcision, and the Sabbath. But really Judaism is national and racial, but also religious. So that’s how God has used religious Judaism to keep the nation, you know, to remain to remain. Because if you married and you were from you know, you couldn’t eat with your parents unless you had a kosher kitchen, so or you couldn’t travel on Shabbat, so that’s gonna affect your whole family.
Did I hope I answered your question there, Brian. Yeah. I’m gonna this isn’t a loaded question. I’m just asking your opinion. So would you consider when when the Bible talks about the faithful remnant that preserves the whole, would you consider believing Jews, the remnant that the Bible is talking about that preserves the whole as God’s chosen people?
I’m not sure because I think a Jewish person that believes in Buddha is still Jewish Yeah. Even though they’re not observant of Judaism. And and we may be, like, more biblical in a way that we live than they would be Yeah. Like, with our values about family and life and so on, but they would still be Jewish because they’re, you know, born in a Jewish family. It’s that confusing national plus Maybe I need to word that a little bit better.
What I think I mean by that is that God holds to his I think back to Chronicles, the story of of Elijah where God talks about he has not rejected Israel because there is a there is a number of faithful. Mhmm. And because of that number of faithful, God still holds true to his plan for the whole because there’s a number of faithful who are believing. And I guess that’s kind of the question I’m asking is that, or am I am I missing the the boat there so much? Well, as yeah.
I I see where you’re going with that. There is there we we would as as evangelical Christians or, you know, you could say Bible believing Christians, we would we could think of it as, as believers in Jesus that are Jewish, so they might be a faithful remnant, but I think the rest are still Jewish. Yeah, absolutely. So, excuse me. So Elijah, you know, he was talking about he was in despair and he says, well, I am the only one left and everything.
And then God says, well, no, I have 7,000 more. But it does bring us to an important point which is, are God’s promises unconditional? And, that’s something that can be confusing for non Jewish believers like myself, like maybe most of us that hear this, is that God’s promise for Israel nationally are, I believe, unconditional, to do with the land of Israel. So God promised the land Psalm a 100 and 5:8 through 11, the covenant with, over the land with Abraham, which is, Genesis 15 through 17, and God, like this very dramatic ceremony that God enacts while Abraham is kind of out of it and in sleep or, you know, God walks through these pieces of an animal, which was a common way to enact a covenant. So it was a way of saying if you don’t keep this covenant, this is what’s gonna happen apparently.
That’s the main way scholars see that part. So God gives these great promises to Abraham and then he enacts it. Abraham doesn’t walk through the pieces, and that’s to do with the land. Now where we can get confused as, believers in Jesus is there isn’t we don’t believe in a dual covenant for salvation. So if you come and argue with me, well, the Jewish people have suffered so much, they have.
And also there has been such a misrepresented gospel to them. There has often been even persecution by the elements of the church, even probably real believers that persecuted Jewish people and might even do so today, very abhorrent behavior. So you could but that doesn’t enable me to make the argument that Jews can be saved or, have a have a covenant of salvation through the atonement of Jesus or some other way. I don’t really believe that. I believe that Jesus is the single atonement for for Jews or non Jews.
Yeah. And and we’ll talk to our Jewish friends about that too Mhmm. If if that comes up. Yeah. Good.
Good. So let’s let’s segue a little bit into some just personal, what it’s like to worship in Israel because you’re a pastor. You’re a gentile pastor. Mhmm. But your lovely beautiful wife is a Jewish believer.
Right. And so what does worship in a in a messianic context look like if if and I don’t know exactly what what the congregation you’re part of is whether it’s entirely messianic congregation or if it’s is it geared that way, kind of messianic powers? Yeah. Well, we’re we would call ourselves messianic, and that’s how we kind of identify. There have been different descriptions over the years of Jews that believe in Jesus or are part of this thing.
And I’m not, like, a lead pastor of a congregation. We’ve just been kind of pitch in pastors and servant pastors because there are many congregations. Just by the way, that’s an amazing phenomenon of modern Israel is that when I was in Israel, previously, there were 4 Hebrew speaking congregations in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, for instance. Now we probably don’t have any idea how many congregations there are. These are Jews and some non Jews, some mixed marriages, people that are there believing in Jesus that are speaking Russian or Ethiopic, Amharic from Ethiopia, or English or Hebrew.
So that’s that’s an amazing thing that’s happened. Messianic worship runs the gamut. So we have on the one side of the movement, we have what we call orthopractic, which tends to be more like I would call it, and I don’t mean it disparagingly, but we’re not part of this. So a little as an outsider, I would say it’s it’s Jewish wannabes. So this is a person that’s absolute will only meet on the true Shabbat, which is Saturday.
Friday night’s a Saturday. And we need to keep a kosher kitchen in some way, and we need to, you know, be much more like Judaism. Usually, that kind of service would have a lot more liturgy, liturgy and the, you know, kind of a prayer service. I’ve never been one for really long church services, so, you know, it’s harder for me to to have that kind of service. Now we talked about this the other day that Christian churches, even the ones that say we don’t have liturgy, we do have orders of service.
Mhmm. And when and those are usually published on a, you know, piece of paper in the evangelical churches I was in. So that’s the one side. Mhmm. The other So is that is that a kind of a blending of the Old Testament law and, well, not law as much as the festivals and trying to incorporate that into the church in a Christian context, is that what a lot of that Well, in Israel in Israel, the the Jewish calendar is more is a given.
So that’s something that doesn’t work as well in the US because, you know, if we’re not in a city with a large Jewish population, we may not even know that it’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when god said Jewish people forever should keep this as a solemn day and fast Mhmm. And afflict themselves. So we keep a Jewish calendar because the whole country is keeping a Jewish calendar. But when we were in the United States, we also kept Jewish festivals because we were in New York and it was a much more Jewish context. But we don’t really see the Shabbat as having to meet on a Sabbath.
So the the problem for the really orthopractic, the really kind of more liturgical law based observance is it’s not just biblical observance, it’s rabbinic. So so much of Jewish the the synagogue worship and the prayers are are from the rabbis. So you have tons of scripture. Next to, you know, our faith and the New Testament and things that we believe, it is the most scripture based Mhmm. You know, worship, and Jews believe in one God and then God who’s a father.
Okay? We understand it in a way more deeply, I think, as believers in Jesus because we have, Jesus as part of this relational thing where He is the Son, but He is God, you know, so there’s more of a relationship, but but Jews believe in God as a father, whereas Islam doesn’t have that. Islam has one God, but he’s not really a father figure. He’s he’s quite different. Yeah.
Yes. So biblical, Judaism would be different than what Judaism really is today. Mhmm. There’s a lot of evolution there. Yeah.
When you come to that issue as a messianic Jew, a Jew that follows Jesus, then you have to kind of pick and choose. So what are you gonna keep? Well, where we go, we started to go to King of Kings, we were involved in another a local, messianic body for a while. We just, for practical reasons, needed to go to this other place and we’ve loved them both. And King of Kings meets on Sunday night, so not on the Sabbath, the literal Sabbath, which is Saturday.
And that’s just because people are working and many people get there without cars, a lot of people, it’s an English service, so you have a lot of expatriates that don’t have cars, so they have to have public transportation to get to the service. So that’s just a practical thing. It’s Sunday night, but they read something of the portion of the week. So that’s a division of the first five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and then it’s divided up on a yearly reading. So they’ll read something from that, something from the prophets, something from the New Testament and sing the Shema.
Shema, Israel Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1, which is a Jewish creed, really. So and that’s the center of synagogue service, really, is the Shema. So they’ll do that. Whereas, you know, a very kind of more of the, traditional service would have much more of the prayer service and a lot more reading. Mhmm.
So the other side is you have a service that’s basically like yours and mine, but it’s in Hebrew. Mhmm. And that was kind of more of our our our tradition. You know, our worship was, you know, we’re we’re worshiping, we’re clapping or, you know, raising our hands and singing the Psalms and just worshiping God, but everything is in Hebrew. And it would be maybe on a Saturday or, you know, another time.
So that was kind of more where we were. Our identity as messianics was more to do not the connection with being Jewish, but but because that’s already there. Mhmm. When you’re in Israel, you’re already keeping the holidays because everyone is. Your kids are off school.
Buses stop on Sabbath. And already, it’s very hard not to it’s very hard to eat non kosher meat because you have to go out of your way to find it and buy it. So you’re doing some that’s already to do with Jewish identity, so you don’t have to have the kind of strictness of being more Jewish so that you’re connecting with the Jewish people. Because you are you’re connecting because you’re a citizen of Israel and you’re, you know, doing this together. It should be different than how it would be here in the States if you’re part of a Messianic congregation because they’re trying to grasp on to the Jewish identity and incorporate it whereas it’s already there.
Right. So you’re not having to incorporate Jewish identity because it’s already part of the identity. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes I and I have to say about, trying to be really Jewish outside of Israel in a messianic context.
I get it. I understand there are a few people that might be influenced by that towards the gospel. There are a few that have come from really orthodox Jewish backgrounds to believe in Jesus, but most Messianic congregations in the United States at least are not mostly Jewish. They might have quite a few intermarriages. Intermarriages.
So, you know, you really it’s not kind of missional in the sense that you’re just, you know, such a witness to the Jewish community because you’re doing those Jewish things. It’s more kind of people have different ways of looking at it, but they say, well, I just really relate to that. So the danger in that is that you can get, well, the Torah wow. In in my church, someone might say, I grew up and they never talked about the Torah. You know, I didn’t know the word Torah and yet it’s so important.
Well, of course, you know, the first five books of the Bible are very important, but not to the extent that Judaism does it where that’s like, that’s it. You know, that’s the Torah. And these other things are important, but in Judaism, we don’t read them much. Orthodox Jews usually know very little about the prophets. They’ll know the first five books really well.
Some people memorize them, and they’ll know the Psalms. And some people memorize the Psalms in Hebrew, which is pretty incredible. Yeah. Ida Gardner that had memorized the Psalms Yeah. Just praying them through Yeah.
Day after day. So I I may have digressed quite a bit That’s great. Explanation. But No. I I heard when I was in Israel many many years ago when we visited the Wailing Wall, that’s one of the things they talked about.
The the rabbis who serve there Mhmm. They spend the bulk of their time memorizing scripture. One of their jobs, I guess, one of the things they do, which is interesting. I thought it was pretty neat. Mhmm.
Good. Well, let’s so let’s let and let me just Yeah. Add before we shift gears there. We have to remember when we approach Judaism as people, excuse me, that didn’t grow up, Jewish is Judaism is truly a 2 book religion. And for Orthodox Jews, it’s, they’re inspired scripture.
The Bible is even more so inspired, but so is the Talmud, which is, you know, a massive work of Jewish law with all kinds of things in it from straight scriptural quotations to legends and mythology, really, and it’s just an amazing collection and it’s amazing to to study it and learn it, but you you have to understand that about Judaism that orthodox Jews consider both of those works inspired by God. Sure. It takes each of the 600 laws and expounds upon them. Right? Or is that Yes.
It it does. It’s, it’s not strictly so. Yeah. But, yes, it starts with, with an earlier work called the Mishnah, which was which was put together, codified, or collected around 200 AD. So that would’ve the Mishnah would be a lot of the underlying things that Jesus was dealing with.
Many have studied that, you know, how relation between things that Jesus was saying and what we can see in Judaism, which is very important, by the way, and very helpful. Mhmm. And then the Talmud takes those that smaller work and makes a giant commentary on it. Okay. So that’s, that’s the two components of the Talmud.
Mhmm. Good. Anything else you wanna talk about about worship or Jewish worship? Or Well, I I think we need to find something that speaks to our hearts, and I understand where people say, well, that’s the Torah. The danger is if we become overly Torah focused, which I I personally believe is a fault of Judaism, and I could I would say that to my Jewish friends, you know, if that if we’re talking about the topic, you can become overly focused on one part of the Bible.
Mhmm. If if you were to say to me, Randall, we just love the Lord and we’re just, you know, and we only read the New Testament because, you know, every now and then, we’ll I would say, you know, hey. Right? I mean, you would probably feel that too. So Sure.
Yeah. And that’s that’s, that’s an issue here that that should be addressed, especially by people that are that are really interested in Judaism. Worst case scenarios are people that become more and more fascinated with Judaism and then convert to Judaism. Yeah. And eventually, they’ll they’ll say, and we’ve had messianic congregations, whole congregations go this way, say, well, we no longer claim that Jesus is divine.
He was chosen by God. He’s anointed by God. That’s what messiah means, but, you know, we don’t wanna go that far. So now that’s that’s heresy. Now you’re really not an Orthodox believer anymore.
Yeah. I’m okay with the gospels, but not okay with Colossians, you know, because Colossians is clear that that’s what it’d be like saying for like Christian Or Galatians or yeah. Yeah. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna read those books because I don’t like what they say or I’d or I’d rather focus on, you know, just those, just the gospels or just the book of Romans or whatever. Right.
We need them. Yeah. Equally erroneous. Yeah. I mean, I say all the time, it’s I always tell people if you’re gonna read the book of Leviticus, read the book of Hebrews right along with it.
Because Hebrews to me is kind of the new testament explanation Yep. Of of Leviticus. And so you gotta have them both together. We need them both. We can’t really understand Hebrews completely unless we know Leviticus, but we can’t I don’t think understand Leviticus unless we can read Hebrews one way.
I think that’s a great way to look at it. Yep. Alright. So we’re going, move a little bit into the political realm. This is probably what is the most controversial thing to talk about right now if you’re talking about what’s going on in Israel with the Israel Hamas war.
Although, you know, what happened in October of last year, was probably, I think the biggest tragedy since the 1967 probably. Well, it was the biggest, the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Since the since By by far. Okay. Yeah.
But it’s not new. It’s been happening. You know, Hamas has wanted to destroy Israel, Hezbollah wanted to destroy Israel. Before that, the Palestinian state wanted to the PLO wanted to destroy Israel. And so, you know, there were groups that wanted to destroy Israel before Israel ever even existed.
That’s True. In part why Israel came into existence is because of the persecution of Jews in Europe in the in the twenties thirties and Mhmm. Of course, culminating with the holocaust in the in the thirties and forties. But let’s I wanna talk a little bit about this the Palestinian state because that’s the biggest thing that I think the biggest misunderstanding that people have here in the states at least that I hear people say is that Israel took away the took the Palestinian state away from the Palestinians. Mhmm.
And that’s actually a misnomer because at no point in history ever has there been a Palestinian state. If you wanna talk about, you know, land ownership, if you just wanna talk about the land or the or whatever, you know, if anybody has a right to it historically, it’s it’s Israel because Israel had an established nation in the nation of Israel. Mhmm. Of course, you know, if you are a student of Bible history, you know, 70 AD when the Romans invaded and kicked out most of the Jewish people and disperse them all over the world and really, changed the name of Judea to Palestine, which is the comes from the word Philistine. They if you look at it history, the reason it’s called Palestine is because the Romans wanted the most offensive moniker for the for the area that they could come up with.
And knowing that the Philistines were the the most hated people group of the Jews because they were the ones who had persecuted them the most. The Philistines who, by the way, were probably European, white invaders, seafaring invaders. But anyway, they they took that name kind of as a derogatory term for for the Jewish people who were still there. But over the centuries, you know, you can look at even going back to the 1400 when the Ottomans, the Turks took over what now is Israel and and Palestine, they had 600 years to establish a Palestinian state and they never did. And then in 1947, the UN tried to establish the 2 states and the Palestinians rejected it because they it was to them, any Jews in Palestine was in was a what’s the word I’m trying to say?
Would be a scourge to them. And so they want any Jews in the land, not even they couldn’t even think about the idea of 2 states, it was just we don’t want any Jews in the land at all. And so they didn’t want a 2 state solution, so they were offered a 2 state solution and they rejected it. And they’ve been offered, is it 6 times since 1948, I think, 2 state solutions been offered in in every instance, Palestine has rejected it. Mhmm.
Palestinians have rejected it because they don’t want Israel to exist, period. But anyway, I’m speaking, I’m putting words in your mouth. I wanna throw that out to you because you know way more about it than I do. Well, you’re doing kind of a review of history. Yeah.
Yeah. So tell me just kinda give me your take on it and your take on the current war in Gaza because what we hear is all the, you know, the IDF is heavy handed, they’re they’re killing civilians, and we know there have been civilian casualties. That’s I mean, I’m not trying to make light of it. That does happen in war. You try to avoid when it it happening in war, but it’s hard to do battle with people who put their bases in hospitals Mhmm.
And in homes filled with children and women Yeah. And then wanna shoot you or strap a bomb to a kid’s chest and put a kid underneath the tank. Mhmm. And so it’s hard to avoid that when that’s kinda what you’re dealing with. But anyway, you you know more about it, so kinda explain a little bit.
You you covered you covered a lot there in your kind of introduction to the question, Brian. Thanks very much. Israel was born out of the Holocaust, which is one of the great facts of history, you know, you you have the biggest murder of Jews ever. It’s not the new genocide because there was attempts at genocide in the Bible that we can read about. Moses and and under Esther in Babylon.
But the Holocaust was just this emotive thing that happened and that America was very involved with because we came in towards the end of the war. And then, you know, our soldiers were some of those that discovered these horrible camps where people had been starved and tortured to death or murdered outright. Mhmm. 6,000,000 Yes. Jewish people.
And 6 is probably conservative because those are the ones that you know, their lists of names. Mhmm. And because the Germans would list people on their trains and you know, so we have lists and we have people’s families and how many children there were and people that, you know, Jewish people that anyone could just meet that lost their grandparents or you know, we grow up with our grandparents and aunts and they’re like, no, I didn’t have any aunts and uncles because everyone’s you know. So this is the Holocaust. And when the Holocaust was going on, there was a lot of sympathy for the Jewish people.
And then there was kind of a philosophical movement toward people being national, to have national homes that had to do with language and religion and stuff like this that led to our modern times. So there was a movement towards having a Jewish state. As you mentioned, the Ottomans were here for were when I say here, sorry, I’m live in Israel. So the Ottomans were in Israel and a lot more of that part of the world for 500 years, but they never did anything to develop the land. In fact, they built one city when they were there, which is Beersheba, right towards the end of their reign.
At the beginning, they did build a lot and they renovated. So they’re incredible builders, Salim the Magnificent in, you know, when he first took over modernized Jerusalem for that time. So when you come to the 19 forties and this horrible tragedy, Jewish people needed a place, and then there’s this historical connection. Well, something people forget is the transition, which was the British. So the British had captured the land from the Turks Mhmm.
In, 1917 in World War 1. It was just part of the whole movement in World War 1. And, yes, they were very colonial, and they divided up the Middle East with France. Before even the war was won, they had already divvied it all up. And that’s where we get our modern states like Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Israel.
And Israel was gonna be much bigger. So the British went to the United Nations and they received a mandate. So their government was called the Mandate Government. And the mandate was to create a Jewish state in Palestine, which was the name for that region. And that, as you mentioned, Hadrian started because he hated the Jewish people, and it had always been called Judea.
Mhmm. So he wanted to get rid of, you know, Jew, Judea. He didn’t like that, so he went with Palestine in, in Latin, came up with Palestine, and we still use it unfortunately in our religious textbooks today. So, 1948, the British were tired of the mandate and they had tried to compromise and appease, which is the same mistake being made today, in the Middle East. The Middle East doesn’t do well with appeasement.
It it does well with respect for force. Everyone knows that that has studied modern Middle Eastern history. So the British, said we’re done with this. It’s 1948, and here’s our proposal, United Nations, a 2 state solution. That’s where the term comes from.
It’s from the British and the end of the mandate. So they’re like, okay. We’re gonna divide it up, and we’ve had all these committees meeting in different papers and different studies, some of them that thick. Mhmm. And we’ve done all this, and and so here’s our proposal.
By the way, Jerusalem’s not gonna be either. It’s gonna be international. We’re not even it’s not gonna be Jewish, it’s not gonna be the new State of Palestine for the local people. So and by the way, that was a historical, misunderstanding. There weren’t really a Palestinian people.
Mhmm. Palestinians were Arabs that lived in the area under the Turks. Mhmm. And you can prove from history that there’s a massive immigration at the end starting at the end of the 1800. And, really, it was because Jews were coming back to the land, so there’s all this need for infrastructure.
And many Arabs moved there, and the British were there later. So there were You know, one of the things I read historically is the prior to 1948, while Jews were a minority in Israel, they had all the money. Mhmm. Palestinians may have owned some of the land, but they didn’t have any any money, and so all the infrastructure was the Jewish people. All the all the power in a sense was the Jewish people who were there because they were the ones who were really providing the stability.
Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Well, Yeah. No. It’s a discussion. So, yeah, thank you so much.
Well, you know, that wasn’t the intention Mhmm. Of the Jewish people. The the the vision of Theodore Herzl, the father modern father of Zionism, was the Jewish people would come back, and then that would just get everyone else like, woah. This is awesome. You know?
Hey. We like this. The Jewish people are bringing us some, you know, more advanced education from Europe and, you know, training in agriculture and manufacturing. So we’re gonna we’re gonna adopt that too, and we’re gonna modernize. So that was really the vision of Theodore Herzl.
But as you mentioned, there’s a rejectionism. I do wanna say about Palestinian, while there wasn’t really an Arab Palestinian identity, there is now. So Palestinians are Arabs that are kind of local in Israel. Another really big thing, by the way, is that we have a 1,000,000 and a half, almost 2,000,000, Israeli Arabs in Israel that are full citizens. In fact, there was a rescue today.
There was a rescue of a Bedouin Muslim man who’s an Israeli citizen that was captured during the massacre on October 7th, and they rescued him. So Jewish fighters went in and risked their lives and rescued this man from his captors, his Hamas captors in Gaza today. So, Palestinian would be something that many Arabs would now be kinda local and they’ve, you know, are part of the country and, very sort of political and national, but it wasn’t in 1948. So getting back to the mandate, the British said, we’re tired of this. We’re giving it back.
We, you know, we can’t so they here’s our proposal. And the United Nations voted for the partition plan. Well, that was a great victory for Jewish people who had wanted their own homeland and national identity and national political standing for status for 2000 years, but a tragedy for the whole Arab sector who rejected it outright and said absolutely not. We’ll never have a have a Jewish state. We’ll drive them into the sea Mhmm.
Which, by the way, reminds us of the chant these days from the river to the sea Mhmm. Meaning no Jewish Israel at all, just an Arab state Yeah. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of college students on campuses chanting, not no, I don’t think knowing really what they were chanting. Yeah.
Many didn’t. So the instigators and the people that are the radical academics teaching those concepts, they know very well. Mhmm. But, and and ones, you know, that are really pro Palestinian for different reasons, they know. Mhmm.
But a lot of people that just take it as a cause, something important to believe in and fight for, they didn’t know what they were saying. Yeah. They they didn’t know they’re chanting for the eradication of a people. Yes. That’s right.
And and then accusing Israel of genocide when Yeah. You know, this chance taking off around the world of Mhmm. From the river to the sea, which means get rid of the Jewish state. Yeah. And what would that look like?
Well, it would look like a Hamas massacre. Mhmm. If if the northern terrorists had come from across the Lebanon border, they would have done the same thing, murder, rape, burn, pillage, kidnap. You know, unfortunately, this is, non Western ways of fighting. And and Islamic, it goes back to the Quran, and also the Hadith.
You can you can study this in the Hadith that Mohammed actually, allowed his men who were hesitating to rape when they were capturing women who were not Muslim, to rape them in front of their husbands. And Mohammed, basically, according to the Hadith, which is tradition, added on to the Koran but believed in by most Muslims is, that that was that was okay to do, and they shouldn’t be worried about that. So, unfortunately, that’s part of Islamic warfare often. So when you go back to the question of Palestine, Israel gleefully accepted the plan in 1947 November of 1947, voting in New York at the UN. And, the Arabs absolutely rejected it, including the local Palestinians who were underrepresented.
They weren’t, you know, they were just one of several Arab forces that attacked Israel and lost. Basically, they lost. They had they accepted the partition plan, the Arab sector would have gained much more, and really they lost the statehood because there was never a Palestinian state, as you say. Is it because Israel captured the central strategic high ground, the so called West Bank, which is the middle of our country, like, you know, like looking up at the mountains. I talked about the Shenandoah Valley for us locals, you know, the mountains.
That would be them. Mhmm. Was it no. It was the Jordanians that captured that, not Israel, in 1948. Jordan came across, they said, we reject this whole plan, and they prevented Palestinian statehood in those predominantly Arab areas.
Yeah. And that’s that’s a good point to I’m glad you said that because, nobody knows that, that Jordan could have created a Palestinian state when they captured all that area, and they they didn’t do it because they wanted control. And and Egypt, where did this whole thing about Gaza come from? Egypt didn’t do it with what they captured, which was the Gaza Strip. That was under Egyptian control.
No Palestinian state. They only manipulated the Palestinians and helped them. As the PLO formed, they backed them and helped them as much as they could to destabilize Israel after 1948 until 67. And, you know, people are more familiar with the 6 Day War in 1967. What a lot of people don’t know is Israel was facing annihilation and they and Israel was digging mass graves for Jewish casualties, tens of thousands of casualties in Tel Aviv, expecting 40,000 casualties maybe because Egypt was gonna attack, Jordan was gonna attack, Syria was gonna attack modern weapons from the Russians.
It was a deadly thing, but miraculously, Israel won that war in a few days by preempting and destroying the air forces of those countries, especially Egypt. And when I was when I was in school learning history, that was talked about in a positive way. Mhmm. Today, it’s absolutely a tragedy, is how it’s taught in school. Mhmm.
Which is which is, Palestinian propaganda. Palestinian propaganda has a name for it. It’s called the nukba, and it means the, the tragedy. So this is when the Palestinians lost that that territorial control. So 1967, Israel captures the central strategic high ground of the country, captures the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and grows by 2 thirds in 6 days.
So it’s an amazing time. Israel could have annexed all those areas perhaps at that time. It might have, you know, would have been a political, somewhat chaotic, but nothing like if there was annexation now, and didn’t. And it’s perpetuated a problem. There was military governance in these areas, and that didn’t go over well.
And but, you know, that’s the situation we had until the Oslo Accords. You mentioned the many offers of a final solution or a final settlement of the 2 state, you know, idea where Israel has offered incredible, really dangerous strategically dangerous offers to the Palestinian side and been totally rejected. So, you know, the Camp David Accords, that was an attempt with Yasser Arafat, and and the Saudi Prince, criticized who’s involved. He said, you know, the Palestinians really blew it. Arafat really blew it on this one.
He was offered 95% of the territory or 85, 90% of what he wanted and said no, went back to war. That was the bus bombings. And that led to, the division with a security barrier between the Arab areas and Israel to stop the suicide bus bombings Mhmm. In the early 2000. The Intifada.
Well, you got a lot of history. So you really jump from 48, no Palestinian state, then you have some wars like the 67 war, the surprise attack against Israel 1973, which people will compare. That was Yom Kippur War. I remember that because dad was in the military. We lived in Europe, and and the Arabs cut the Arab States cut off the oil supply to Europe.
Oh, wow. Yeah. They punished the whole West, so we couldn’t use cars on Sunday where dad was stationed. Yeah. So, yeah, those 73 surprise attack.
Then we had, the the Lebanon wars. Now we’re working on a third war with Hezbollah, but we’ve had 2 major wars with Lebanon. And now we have the the Israel Hamas war that started October 9 2023. Yeah. So what do you think is the biggest misconception about that war?
Well, I think that the, Palestinians have have an incredible and Hamas has an incredible cleverness and shrewdness in manipulating the media. So I’ll give you a for instance. I I was recently in South Korea, which is still has very conservative roots, and, I don’t know if it’s a Christian majority, but I think it might be a majority now. But I my understanding is most of the news in Korea comes from Al Jazeera, which is like a Hamas spokesman Mhmm. Publication based in Qatar, and that’s where they get their news.
So we have in the United States, we’re fortunate because you can get a lot of, you know, news that’s not mainstream, you know, not just the news broadcast. I re I personally read the news. I don’t watch news that much because I can get it fast. So I read newspapers. The Jerusalem Post is a great English publication available online.
And, many many folks follow, some of the Israeli Messianics that are publishing, and and, I think it’s Ofer Amittai. Anyway, that’s publishing from Israel. A lot of updates. Joel Rosenberg is a Jewish believer who’s written many books and is a very serious, historical scholar. Mhmm.
He publishes now an excellent daily news news feed with, with articles and some videos. So these are we have a lot of alternate news that are, to get secondary news for those interested, but not everyone has that. So Hamas has has captured the kind of picture so that the war isn’t about Israel recovering more than a 100 hostages that we still have captured. These are our teenage girls Mhmm. That were taken from army bases and raped and then are held captured and made to wear hijabs and they’re trying to force them to convert to Islam and they beat them and they make them stay with men, in some cases at least, and it’s and babies and elderly and some soldiers that are teens.
There are people’s teen sons and Mhmm. And daughters. So, they’re they’re holding more than a 100 of our people there. We’re a small country. That’s that’s a shattering fact that people have a hard time sleeping with Mhmm.
You know, to know that that’s going on. So, Israel wants to rescue these hostages, get them out of Gaza, and also wants to dismantle Hamas’ ability to ever be a threat again. Mhmm. So you have to have a war to do it. Does that mean that you try everything in your power to prevent civilian casualties?
Yes. Believe it or not, Israel tells everybody we’re gonna attack this area. Please vacate it. Well, what are terrorists gonna do? They vacate too.
They dress up as civilians, and they go to the next place where they’re gonna be safe. So Israel’s definitely focusing on fighting real terrorists in tunnels. They’re shooting at them, but there are a lot of civilian casualties. The sad fact is that that’s what Hamas wants. Mhmm.
Because civilian casualties delegitimize Israel and make Israel look bad and was part of their whole plan. Well, you have to ask yourself questions about civilian casualties. Does that mean that you can never ever fight a war again if you can’t totally prevent or almost prevent civilian casualties? Because what’s that gonna teach the bad guys? Mhmm.
Well, as long as we’re buried under houses and shopping malls and and and the baby’s room and the crib Mhmm. And our tunnel entrance is under the crib as, you know, several have been found Mhmm. Then we’re gonna be safe because they can’t fight us because they’ll look like they’re immoral. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the whole justification for the war, has gone unfortunately towards the Hamas propaganda machine Mhmm.
And Al Jazeera kind of approach instead of a factual approach. Yeah. Well, I saw, I just read this morning that both you the UN and Amnesty International, who are supposed to be, you know, the 2 legitimate, arms in reporting, both of them are only reporting the casualties that they receive from Hamas, or, the Palestinian local government. Mhmm. They’re not reporting any any other side.
So if Israel, you know, bombs a whatever a house and Israel says, no, we, you know, confirm there are only 3 people in it, but Hamas says, no, there were 12 people in there, they’re gonna report 12 casualties even if there’s no evidence that there were 12 people in there. Yeah. Yeah. The current figure is something like 40,000, civilians. 40,000 Gazans killed and almost a 100,000 wounded as of August, 2024.
But what’s really what’s really sad for so called objective news services is all the news services know that those are Hamas figures. So if you look at they’ll say Hamas Health, they say Gaza Health Ministry. Some of them will say the Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry, but most don’t say that. So everyone knows that’s doing media, you know, original facts, they know that those are Hamas produced figures. So first of all, they may be inflated by double.
Mhmm. You know, we might have only had 20,000 killed. The other thing that’s known by the news services producing the news is that Hamas is publishing their their their fighters or terrorist figures with the casualties. Mhmm. It’s not like a secret.
Everyone knows that. So if you’ve got 20,000 casualties well, let’s say it’s 25,000. Israel says they’ve killed close to 20,000 Hamas terrorists. Mhmm. And they have names.
I mean, we have we have pub publications of Hamas. There are paperwork that have been captured so we know, you know, who we’re fighting and also, you know, a lot of, drones and intelligence collections. So when Israel publishes those figures, they’re not trying to, you know so so half are probably Hamas fighters, and then we have no idea how much more the others are inflated. Several statistical statisticians, professional statisticians, have published exposes about Hamas figures, and they say the way that they do them and the way that it’s always so many per day, which is not what warfare is like. There are a lot of casualties on certain time periods and then it’s quiet, and that’s not the way the casualties work.
The UN itself, about a month ago, maybe 2 months ago, they suddenly cut in half their own figures they were publishing for women and children that had been killed in the fighting. Oh, wow. They half their own figures. Yeah. So they, you know, they woke up that some some of these are Yeah.
Erroneous. Yes. So you said something earlier that I think is important because I it’s a misconception about Israel. You were talking about Israeli Arabs Mhmm. Who were citizens, Israeli citizens.
Right. And one of the things I’ve heard somebody say is, well, Israel doesn’t they don’t give anybody rights unless you’re Jewish. And I said, no. Israel is a democracy. Mhmm.
And I think there there are even Arabs who are in the are parliament. Yeah. Okay. So I’m glad that you said that. You confirmed what I thought I knew.
And so, you know, one of the, I guess, arguments is that Israel is suppressing the rights of Palestinians and they’re, you know, restricting their right to come and go, and they’re trying to trying to oppress them. Israel is now the oppressor. They’re the ones who are creating their own holocaust and and destroying Palestinian lives. And so can you speak to that for just a minute and talk about Israel’s perspective on that and why why they have to have, right now, borders Mhmm. And walls and fences up?
Right. Well, there’s not a there are there is a security barrier between Arab, cities in the West Bank. So these are under the pa the PA, the Palestinian autonomy. In the Oslo Accords, which Israel agreed to, many feel that was probably a strategic, mistake for Israel, but, Israel agreed to a process that would give Arabs, not Israeli Arabs, but pal Palestinians that were under military government that would give them autonomy as a process. So the first part of the process was Israel withdrawing from the large Arab cities.
And this is totally misunderstood. Israel is completely withdrawn from large Arab cities like Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Hebron. So Israel has left those areas and and turned over the administration to the PA. Which has been terrible. Correct?
Yeah. It’s been terrible for everybody. Yeah. And the local Palestinians hate the PA. Mhmm.
So and any of them will tell you, not always on camera, but they’ll tell you it’s a corrupt government. They’re getting 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in United States and other Western taxpayer money. And what are they doing with it all because people are living in poverty? Now the the the misunderstanding is that’s all Israel’s fault, but Israel was really trying to to to to move in this process of autonomy. So what would Israel get in exchange for withdrawing from these areas and turning over civilian control and eventually, security control?
Israel would get security, But we never did. And in fact, as that process unfolded, the so called peace process, I say, but the Oslo Accords, there were many more casualties of terrorism. And, you know, I mean, it was really awful for Israel. So that Israel had to go back into the Arab cities and reconquer them at some point to end the Intifada and the bus bombings. And then and then eventually Israel said, well, listen.
So these are the Palestinian areas, but we have roads here because we have a lot of Jewish communities in these areas as well. Historical Jewish communities that go back 1000 of years like in Hebron and, and and in Samaria. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom, you’ll remember. And so this was the heartland of the Bible, the central strategic high ground, Judea and Samaria, or now called the West Bank, politically. So Israel, you know, went back in, restored security, withdrew, and maintains the borders of that.
So that means that people can’t cross without going through Israeli checkpoints from, say, Jordan, across the Jordan River into Israel. Where they did cross from another state into a Palestinian controlled area was Gaza. So wherever that’s happened, that’s what exactly what Israel feared. Hamas has been arming themselves and spending most of their money on buying weapons and explosives and building tunnels and infrastructure to fight Israel under civilian communities. So Israel did there are some in some places, a wall.
Usually, that’ll be right next to a large municipal, Arab area that borders a Jewish community or borders, highways. And you but you can drive down many highways and there we have an Arab town right next to us, and we’re in a town that’s over the Green Line or part of Judea in the so called West Bank. It’s just a sleeper community for Jerusalem. And right next to us is an Arab town where Lazarus at his home called Al Azaria after Al Azar Lazarus. That’s right next to us.
We don’t have a fence. We don’t have a wall. Mhmm. You know, people could walk right across into our neighborhood. They can’t drive across, so I’ll have to go through a checkpoint.
Mhmm. But how many people that are listening to me have wished that they lived in a gated community? Mhmm. You know, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about laws against Arabs or something like that.
So that’s been another catchword, apartheid. Mhmm. And there is a separation between Palestinian Arabs under the PA, who were supposed to be moving towards autonomy, but that’s really failed. And the PA’s lost control, and it’s run by Arab gangs now. And and that’s different from Israeli Arabs.
So we have about 20% of our whole Israeli citizen population is Muslim. And, you know, that’s a rapidly growing demographic and they have a large the largest, Israeli Arab city is, Nazareth. So something like 775000, most of those, Muslim. So we have large Arab cities. Israel, as I mentioned, just rescued a Muslim Bedouin man who was an Israeli citizen.
He was rescued from Hamas. And they tortured and, killed, Muslims too that they captured. Mhmm. So they didn’t, oh, you’re Muslim or, oh, you’re Palestinian. They just, you know Yeah.
It really upset the Bedouin. Sure. So what happens with you know, their their number of Palestinians who are Christian? How do they how do they get stuck? I mean, they’re kinda stuck in the middle, I guess.
Yeah. Especially for, like, a Christian here, we’re talking about these folks who aren’t on board with what Hamas is doing. Hopefully, they’re not anyway. I mean, they’re faithful believing Christians. They happen to live in Palestine.
What’s what’s the how do you love them and support them while also supporting Israel through through all of this? Well, I think that’s something we have to be careful of as those of us that believe in the promises of God for the Jewish people and are praying for, you know, modern Israel and standing with Israel in the media war and that kind of thing. We we don’t that doesn’t mean we hate Arabs. Yeah. And if people talk like that, it’s it’s wrong.
You know, we love everybody. So I think a similar situation in the US Whether they’re Christian or Muslim. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We love people because God loves them. Yeah. And God you know, we believe that Jesus died an atoning death and would have done it for one of those people just like he did for us when we didn’t follow him. Mhmm.
So so we need to love everybody, and, and that includes Arabs and Muslims. And and, so, now the the story of Christian Arabs is very tragic in modern times, and the Arab Christian population is dwindling. So we have less and less that are Israeli Christian Arabs, and we have many less and much more dwindling under the PA. So they were actually persecuted and still are. I have a friend in the Bethlehem area and I won’t mention his name, but I asked him because now Bethlehem is 75%, maybe 80%, Muslim since, especially since the return of that area to Yasser Arafat by Yitzhak Rabin some years ago as the Oslo Accords were unfolding.
It’s now Muslim, and I think Islam targeted that area because of the tradition traditional Christian values. It’s no secret that some Christian, young women have been forced into marriages with Muslims there. And it’s also, you can just look at the celebrations of there was a celebration of Jesus as a Palestinian that was just very it was awful and politicized, you know, and but and then the and then the, Palestinian government, which is, you know, majority Muslim, they canceled Christmas celebration, which is a big source of income and publicity for the the Christian community still there. So I asked my my friend, I said, well, how do people really feel about the local government and the Islamic? And he says, it’s terrible.
We we hate it. We’re afraid. So we were on a tour bus, and I said, would you be willing just on this bus? No one’s gonna record it just to say that. He said, absolutely not.
Mhmm. You see? Because he he would be he would endanger himself if that got out that he said something like that. Oh, yeah. And he lives there.
So it’s very sad about the Christian community. I think some misguided Arab Christians were were big proponents of of, Arab nationalism and wanting a Palestinian state and thought they’d do better, but it’s actually gone really badly for them. Yeah. I wanna say something though about Christians in Arab lands. There were some places with really big populations still of Arab Christians.
ISIS attacked some of those communities some years ago. Traditional Arab Christians have tended to be antisemitic, anti Jewish, and supersessionists, which means that they believe they’re the church and God’s finished with the Jewish people and sometimes just openly hostile, including, unfortunately, many of the local Christian groups in in Israel, like, Armenians and Franciscan Catholics and Greek Orthodox, among others, that as in their hierarchies have been very antagonistic toward Israel and outwardly very pro Palestinian. So that’s really sad. What’s interesting and amazing is that Muslims that are becoming Christians, but came from a Muslim background, so they’re called MBBs, Muslim Background Believers. They are, for the most part, pro Israel, and that’s because they’re reading.
Yeah. They’re reading the Bible, and they’re saying, wow. God’s not finished with this. So I’ve been mistaken about this. Yeah.
You know, I need to love first of all, I’m a follower of Jesus, so I have to love everybody. And but the Jews, wow, Jesus is Jewish. You know, all these things kinda wake up for them. Sure. So and and that’s something I know personally from scholars that are involved in the persecuted church and involved in Muslim outreach, so that publish articles on these kinds of things.
So it’s not just like a legend. So that means a lot of Iranian Christians now, we all know that that’s the fastest growing church in the world is in Iran, a few 100 believers when Khomeini took over in 19 seventies, and now maybe a million, maybe some say 10,000,000. We don’t know. Yeah. But Iranians becoming believers in Europe and becoming believers in Iran, so many of those would be praying for Israel.
Wow. And, yeah, not fans at all of the regime. Yeah. Interesting phenomenon. Right?
Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess one you’d expect from the power of the gospel. Yeah. That’s it.
Now from the Jewish side in Israel, you have a lot of people that share those concerns and are like, man, we as Jewish believers need to make sure that we’re building bridges with Arab Christians. Mhmm. And so there are many, different projects that are bringing Arabs and Jews together, especially youth. When when my daughter was growing up, she’s 21 now, but, when she was a teen, she was going to, worship camp, and and and they’re a blessed group. Dor Dor Habai, it was called, and Succat HaLel, a wonderful ministry, had a lot to do with that.
They always they have Arabs in their 24 hour worship sets, and they have they would have Arab, youth believers and Jewish youth believers and still do. Wow. And and their recordings, go on YouTube and look up Pharisee I think it’s Pharisee Lord Jesus. It’s one of the, you know, our best our greatest hymns at the Garden Tomb At the Garden. In Jerusalem.
K. And there’s a Jewish singer, one of our most famous ones, Joshua Aaron, who’s an American background Jewish believer, living in Israel now, and an Arab a famous Arab Oh, yeah. Christian singer, and they’re singing, you know, a hymn and recording it in in the heart of Jerusalem and in actually Arab East Jerusalem Yeah. At the Garden Tomb. So but there are plenty of those.
Yeah. And that’s good. That’s kinda what I wanted the heart I wanted to get at is it’s they’re It’s not all that it seems to be when you just look at the media portrayal of what’s going on. Absolutely not. And, yeah, there are other things too that, you know, probably we can’t talk about, but there have been meetings of believers from different, you know, different backgrounds and Israelis.
So my my wife was part of a group of Israeli believers back in the late eighties or early nineties that went to, Egypt Oh, wow. And met Egyptian Yeah. Christians. You know, that’s one of her life memories. So there’s, that’s the heart of believers whether they’re Jewish or Arab or or they’re like us and from Virginia or Texas or Yeah.
Something like that, to love to love everyone and to love one another as believers like Jesus said. Yeah. That’s good. Well, we’re gonna bring this to a close. I wanna I wanna just close with 2 things, really 2 questions or a 2 sided question maybe.
Let’s let’s just finish up by talking about the future, what you think the future is for Israel both in the physical and in the spiritual. As someone who is a pastor in Israel, what do you think God’s plan is for Israel in the future? But also just in the next few years down the road with what’s going on with the Israel Hamas war, how do you see that coming out too? So let’s start with that and then close with the the spirit. Okay.
Well, I think Israel, if they’re allowed to, will win this war against Hamas and, you know, to a large extent, disarm them and prevent them from shooting thousands of missiles every year or almost every year as they have done. The the future of the Lebanon conflict is less certain. Israelis have had to evacuate all of our northern borders. So basically, Hezbollah has carved out a security zone inside northern Israel. So nobody knows.
Maybe our upper echelon of leaders have a strong idea how they’re gonna end that and return our communities and displaced persons. I think in the long run, I’m absolutely certain that Israel will survive as a nation, and I think God has brought them back to stay. To me, those are clear fulfillments of scripture where God said, you know, okay. There was a restoration from Babylon, but it didn’t fulfill all the scriptures of how there’d be forests, you know, great forests and replanting of things and reestablishing of certain communities that only happen in modern times. So I think this is it.
Israel is back to stay. The great Derek Prince, a fantastic Bible scholar, one of the greatest Greek scholars we’ve had in, in the church in, you know, in the last decades, he said it’s 2 minutes to midnight prophetically because Israel is back in her land. So this is a sign when we look at prophecy, we don’t have to necessarily get to, okay, this means exactly this and this means exactly this. You look at you look backwards at milestones. Some scholars have looked at the the capture of Jerusalem as the ending of the, the nations trampling underfoot the, you know, Jerusalem was 1967 when Israel recaptured Jerusalem from Jordan, at least the old city in the, Arab sectors of Jerusalem.
Mhmm. Jerusalem had been divided. So I think those are prophetic milestones. The return of Jews from the northern country, that’s not completed yet. We still have a 1,000,000 and a half Jews and Russian speaking lands, perhaps, And they haven’t returned, but they’re coming back.
Now we have a war, so that was accelerated by the Russia Ukraine war. But it’s not complete, but that’s you know, Isaiah talks about the northern country, which didn’t happen in the return from Babylon. These are modern prophecies that are milestones. Sometimes you have to wait until something happens and then looks back. Sure.
I think one of the most interesting discussions is is this the Gog and Magog war or about to be because Israel’s fighting Iran, and they’re fighting Lebanon and Iraq and, you know, some other Arab states are very hostile to Israel like Turkey. But you don’t have Libya. You don’t really have Sudan and Ethiopia involved as Kush, biblical Kush. So, you know, I think I go with Michael Brown. He’s a great, Messianic Jewish scholar and has a great program called Line of Fire.
So he says it’s not Gog and Magog as far as his understanding of, you know, biblical prophecy, but it’s headed probably that way direction. Because you have a great northern country country coming into this battle, which is probably Russia. You don’t have to say, you know, exactly that this name means Moscow and this name Sure. It’s it’s a milestone. It’s, you know, a great northern power.
It could be Russia, but Russia is not attacking Israel right now. Mhmm. So if it if Gog and from Magog, which is Ezekiel 3839, if that means Russia, they’re not in it yet. So eventually, they will be according to that prophecy. Also, I I separate, and and many scholars do, but not everyone, the Gog and Magog war in Ezekiel from the one in Revelation.
Because the one in Revelation is at the end of time Mhmm. But also after a 1000 year millennial reign, which I take to be literal. Mhmm. And, by the way, I’m what’s called premillennial, which means I believe that Jesus will return for a literal 1000 year reign. And Satan will be bound, and then he’ll be released, and then there’ll be a great battle of the nations against Israel.
And that’s when the Gog and Magog so I think in Revelation, it’s representing a much bigger thing, which is all the nations and the hatred and rejection of god and people fighting with Satan to try to overthrow the messiah and his kingdom. I see that as different than maybe a smaller or more local event of history, of Ezekiel 38 and 39. And, also, what we don’t have is unwalled cities because god says, I’m gonna put a hook in your nose, Gog, and drag you down into this war, and you’re gonna find Israel like prey, like they’re gonna have all these open places you can just capture, and that’s not Israel. Yeah. Okay?
It’s like, you know, we have we relied too much on our high-tech sensors and fell prey to Hamas, but we’re definitely, you know, walls and sensors and gates and minefields and borders and everything else. So, that that part isn’t isn’t, you know, that part wouldn’t be now. Yeah. It has to be sometime down the road. Yeah.
Will this rule make some agreement with the Palestinians and have a Palestinian state. I think it’s it’s too difficult to say, but most Israelis are conservative, and the Hamas war just made us more so. We’re tending to be conservative on the question of having a state next to us that’s Palestinian and not under our security, at least, at least with us controlling the borders. That’s what Israel’s fighting for with the rafiah crossing from Gaza into Egypt to control the borders against smuggling. Mhmm.
So, yeah, I think we’re we’re seeing a a big shift, but it’s not clear how things will go. But Israelis are tending to be more resistant to a 2 state solution, which was very popular in Israel a few years ago before the bus bombings, before the withdrawal from Gaza, you know, which was kind of an experiment in a Palestinian state Yeah. And it turned into what it turned into. Yeah. I would imagine there would have to be some kind of absolute non aggression commitment or policy.
I mean, I don’t know how you could have a 2 state solution when one state vows Yeah. You’re just total destruction. And educates its citizens, which the PA does. They’re our peace partners, so called, but they’re they’re paying salaries, actually. This is a this is a fact that’s quite well known now, is American taxpayer money is helping to pay the salaries of terrorists that have committed atrocities against Israeli Jews in Israel.
So that’s, very sad with all the monies that are going a certain amount of PA budget because the more you kill, the more you make. Yeah. Wow. That’s cynical. Right?
Yeah. Wow. Well, this has been a fantastic discussion. I really appreciate you taking the time to to meet with us. We’re praying for you with all the things you have going on with your family, with your dad right now, and and, stand with you in any way we can, but we so special.
Wish you well in the coming weeks. Well, thank you. Well and if I could just thank your, your viewers that are, that are believers that are praying for Israel and care for Israel. You know, that really makes a big difference for Israeli Jewish people. And 25 years ago, most Israeli Jews didn’t know that a lot of evangelical Christians loved them and prayed for them and believed in their right to succeed and prosper and so on.
But now I would say a lot of Israeli Jews do, and one of the reasons is the support of evangelical Christians who are saying, hey. We’re with you. We’re contributing and helping you with humanitarian aid. You know, we’re, you know, people have given money to help elderly Jews that have been displaced by the Gaza massacre and so on. So that is really makes a big difference, and this is love expressed toward the Jewish people.
And sadly, in the memory, historical memory of many Jewish people, there was persecution by, you know, established Christian communities. But now that, that’s being contradicted by love shown through the through things like like you’re doing right now. So thank you. And I and as an Israeli citizen, I can say thank you for our Jewish friends too. Thank you.
Well, thanks for watching. We hope that you enjoyed, and we hope to see you soon. Bye.